High Times: Are you looking forward to that? Well, I mean, we all know there’s going to be a psychedelic revival, right? It’s so obvious, it just has to happen. High Times: How do you like the revivals of two-tone groups, girl groups, and all the ’50s music? Do you see it as inspired reinterpretation, or just regurgitation? And there’s people desperately trying to do the same thing. And they did it so much better the first time around anyway. I can go to a museum for that, thank you very much.

High Times: I was going to ask you about that-how you felt about all the renaissance of music from the ’50s and ’60s. How many retreads of Chuck Berry are still going on? All those long-haired, platform-booted, flared-jeaned, fucking imbeciles. In the last 15 years music has changed practically not at all. They’re just selling the same old dirge forever and a day. I mean, they’re frequently moaning about album sales dropping. Which is why their crummy industry is falling to pieces. They’ve no fucking sense of anything, no perception. I’m totally unhappy with all record companies. High Times: Are you unhappy with Virgin Records? High Times: We go from the ultrahype of the Sex Pistols to.

High Times: Can you describe the transition you went through, from being the ultimate media-contrived hype product, to being an artist, performer-a musician who calls the shots himself. It took Ann Bardach, whose coverage of the Vicious murder case gave her an international reputation, to get Lydon talking. His character hasn’t changed much in exchanges with the press, as witnessed by his recent battle with Tom Snyder on the “Tomorrow” show. Rotten reverted to his given name, John Lydon, and formed Public Image Ltd. tour when bassist Sid Vicious died of an overdose. The Sex Pistols disintegrated in one awesome, vulgar swoop after their brief, aborted 1978 U.S. His antistardom, right down to the green teeth he cherished as a symbol of his foulness, became his calling card as he cursed out every rock band, TV commentator, record-company employee and virtually every reporter he ever met. Rotten was too good a name for the astounding character he created in this guise, as he built one of the most sensational images in rock history. He was the vile and repulsive Johnny Rotten, lead vocalist of England’s most cursed and celebrated Sex Pistols. Not the textbook version coined by Marsh and Bangs in Creem over a decade ago to describe a certain late-’60s recording sound that has once again become fashionable, but the nightmare visions of brain-damaged apocalypse kids bent on demolishing everything and everyone in their path. Johnny Lydon almost single-handedly defined the “punk ” in punk rock. To pay tribute, we’re republishing Ann Bardach’s interview with the punk legend from the November, 1980 edition of High Times.

Johnny rotten